Alghoritm to establish a picture’s memorability

Natasha Lomas writes about an MIT alghoritm to establish a picture’s memorability: “Asked to explain what kind of patterns the deep-learning algorithm is trying to identify in order to predict memorability/forgettability, PhD candidate at MIT CSAIL, Aditya Khosla, who was lead author on a related paper, tells TechCrunch: “This is a very difficult question and active area of research. While the deep learning algorithms are extremely powerful and are able to identify patterns in images that make them more or less memorable, it is rather challenging to look under the hood to identify the precise characteristics the algorithm is identifying. In general, the algorithm makes use of the objects and scenes in the image but exactly how it does so is difficult to explain. Some initial analysis shows that (exposed) body parts and faces tend to be highly memorable while images showing outdoor scenes such as beaches or the horizon tend to be rather forgettable.” The research involved showing people images, one after another, and asking them to press a key when they encounter an image they had seen before to create a memorability score for images used to train the algorithm.”